


their love lies a loss

by Crazymuggleinthestruggle



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Backstory, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Happy, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mid-Canon, Non-Linear Narrative, Possible Character Death, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 02:07:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30014463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crazymuggleinthestruggle/pseuds/Crazymuggleinthestruggle
Summary: This is Arthur and Eames.This is their life.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	their love lies a loss

**Author's Note:**

> Ok lots of things;  
> First and foremost, shout out to @talloreo and @thegirlwholived for proofreading. 
> 
> The title is from On a Wedding Anniversary by Dylan Thomas.  
> (I was introduced to the poem by someone and found this line to be apt for the title of the fic. So, if you are at all interested in poems, read it. I lack the literary interest to give out opinions on poems.) 
> 
> To our French and Irish speakers out there:  
> I'm not very good at the complicated bits of the language, so please (politely) let me know of the grammatical and/or contextual errors.  
> Thank you.
> 
> As is evident from the summary, I wanted to write an A/E fic that started around the time they meet for the first time and end with their final goodbyes. So it will contain a paragraph or two of MCD. Nothing major, though. However, it's a tad bit descriptive and if you do not want to read it, I suggest you stop now. 
> 
> I took inspiration from another fic for:  
> 1\. the scene where Eames tells Arthur he loves him (although I tried to search for it for months, with no avail. If any of you remember it, please tell me.) 
> 
> 2\. "Nothing is consecrated anymore" is from [ I set a fire (just to see what it kills)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/341969) by pprfaith  
> (It's a lovely fic) 
> 
> That's all folks!  
> Be safe, wear masks and carry on.

When all has crashed and burned, Arthur thinks about Mallorie Cobb who was always Mallorie Miles to him. 

He thinks about walks in Paris and ice creams under the harsh sun. About how her innocent smiles and flowery dresses could strike fear into the hearts of the most hardened criminals much more easily than Arthur was ever able to. Her blue eyes that reflected like an ocean and flowed deeper. The air of self assuredness about her while holding a Beretta when Arthur knew she was anything but. 

Gasping, twisting, he finds Eames' eyes for a final time.  
***  
Years and eons ago, after Cobb had safely returned to his children and Inception was still the brightest star in all of their résumés. 

After the naïve, bright and vivid architect, the protégée of the manic extractor and the meticulous point man.

After paradoxes and a half recalled conversation.  
After. There was - _is_ \- Eames.  
.  
.  
.  
_("What was she like in real life?"  
"She was lovely.")_  
.  
.  
.  
(In all honesty, Eames had always been there.)  
***  
"Eames, knock knock"

"Who's there?" 

"When, where." 

"When, where who?"

"Tonight, my place, you and me," Arthur proclaims with a wink. 

Eames bursts out laughing,"I'm going to tell you something right now, and I need you to promise me that you're not going to freak out."

Arthur stares at him, unamused.

Eames looks him in the eye, serious and says, "I love you so much darling," and then holds up his fingers - 

"Are you counting down to me freaking out?"Arthur cries. Flings a pillow at Eames, misses on purpose, calls him an asshole, and then closes the distance between them with a kiss.  
.  
.  
.  
Eames traces sharp lines with deft fingers while above them, the sky purples and then shatters, stars falling like glittering rain. 

Afterwards, Arthur shoots him out of their dream with a smirk and Eames wonders how anyone, anywhere, could ever even think of giving this up.  
***  
In the end - or maybe it was the start - when it happens, it happens like this.  
.  
.  
.  
Eames, who is not yet Eames but isn’t _not_ Eames either, finds himself in Dublin beside his mother, reveling in the banalities of daily life. 

"You know, “I am at an age where death could strike at any moment,” his mother says imperiously, the generous vowels of his native language, moulding and drying around him. “You should value every second of my life, call and meet me more often, you scut.” 

Eames’s mother takes a slew of vitamins and denies drink and rides cycles frequently. She is the fittest, healthiest seventy year old woman he knows and as far as he can see, the only thing that will be endangering her life any time soon will be matricide.  
.  
.  
.  
Later, during the frantic plane ride to the States, he'll momentarily dwell upon the fact that Irish, for the first time, seemed out of place to him.

That's later though. 

And the worry will be too short lived. Shadowed over by the gnarly branches of death and sorrow.  
.  
.  
.  
His mother starts surfing the news channels muttering about the disparaging quality of news. She stumbles upon a channel that has Dom Cobb’s face plastered on it’s screen and is describing in minute detail the murder of his wife. His mother listens for a few minutes then ploughs forward.

She doesn’t look at Eames. Doesn’t see how he has frozen in his seat, blood turned to ice. 

Eames finds himself in Dublin beside his mother, farther away from Arthur than he has been in the last ten years. Helpless and angry. 

Then, in a flurry of fingers, he sends messages and makes a few calls to his “unsavoury friends”. 

Recalls a conversation from five years ago. Just before the news of Mal's marriage. Wills himself to stop thinking. 

_(“I heard Sonia was an unsavoury character and decided that however unsavoury you are, you were not on her level.”_

_Eames hums at that, “Us unsavoury folk do prove to be un-unsavory from time to time.”)_

He closes his phone, makes himself comfortable and waits.  
.  
.  
.  
Waits for what he doesn't know.  
.  
.  
.  
(Not yet, anyway)  
.  
.  
.  
(Eames, who in this moment is closer to becoming Eames more than ever, finds himself in Dublin beside his mother, farther away from _Mallorie Cobb_ than he has been in the last ten years. Mallorie Cobb who had been Mallorie Miles the day he met her.)  
***  
Arthur knows Mallorie Miles before he is Arthur. Before he is anyone, really. 

When asked, Arthur will tell how they bonded over their mutual love for Escher, paradoxes and impossible things. He’ll talk about tenacity, charm and ferocity.  
.  
.  
.  
_(“I’m sorry, mon petit bâton.”)_  
.  
.  
.  
Arthur will weave a thousand stories of her tenacity. What he will leave out is that it wasn’t only Mal who was charming and tenacious.  
.  
.  
.  
He never quite finds out if he was the stick who tethered her to the real world or the stick who made sure she didn’t stumble along her way.

(It’s much later that he realises there wasn’t a lot of difference between the two.)  
***  
In the humidity of Quezon, Arthur maps out the scars on Eames’ body. He traces the tattoos that cover the scars. A lifetime worth of them. 

He knows he won’t wake up beside Eames the next day. He has to meet up with Dom in Mecca and Eames has to be in Al Majma'ah Riyadh. Eight hours and nine hundred kilometers away.  
.  
.  
.  
“We could stick together, for a while,” Eames mutters into Arthur’s pale, perfect skin, half asleep.

It’s bloody stupid and unbelievably dangerous. He leaves before morning.  
***  
Mallorie meets Arthur and Eames for the first time in Architectural Design when they are called Arthur Bunin and Eamon ó Broin. She discusses her papers that more often than not come back annotated in red and advise her to be realistic. 

It is Stephen Miles with his uncomfortable expression and guilty eyes that cover the excitement in his eyes, who first introduces Mal, Arthur and Eamon to dream-sharing. It is under his careful eyes that they manage to make their unrealistic architectural styles come true. 

It is under his careful, sly eyes that they meet Dominick Cobb and maybe that was the day they were all doomed. Or maybe it was weeks before, when they dreamed their last natural dream. Or maybe it was when Mal started flirting with Dom, two weeks after their brief introduction and decades of dreaming.

Arthur thinks it might have been a carefully crafted filigree of it all.  
***  
An enveloping darkness, too many drinks and sporadic lights illuminating the winding roads. 

A soft slur and the tumbling words, “Dites-moi, mes chéris, comment faire la différence entre la réalité et un rêve?”

A pause and a tired sigh,“I don’t know, Mal. But, if there’s anything I have learnt in the past five years, it is that you’ll have the answer sooner rather than later.”

A snicker, breaking the fragile silence of the dark sky, “True, a mhuirnín. Mal, I think we should go to sleep as soon as we get back.”  
.  
.  
.  
_(“Tell me, my lovelies, how do we differentiate between reality and a dream?”)_  
.  
.  
.  
Mal did find an answer to her own question. It was the answer that proved to be her undoing in the end.  
.  
.  
.  
Arthur thinks, had he not been quite so drunk, he might have realised the signs then.  
.  
.  
.  
_(“A mhuirnín, has no one ever told you it takes a particular level of self-righteousness to think you are responsible for righting all the wrongs of the world?”)_  
***  
The first time Eames, who is still Eamon, meets Arthur Bunin, neither has the appreciation nor the money for three-piece suits. 

Arthur Bunin is wearing a college sweatshirt with jeans that have seen better days. Pink cheeks and rogue cowlicks. Eamon adores him before he’s even opened his mouth.  
.  
.  
.  
_(“You’re in my Architectural Design class, are you not, a mhuirnín? Would you fancy studying with me this afternoon?”)_  
.  
.  
.  
Once Eamon had become Eames, Irish became a foreign dialect. Discarded like a snake's skin. “A mhuirnín” became “Darling”, “A chrí” gave way to “Petal”. 

And Arthur Bunin became Arthur. Sweatshirts, overused jeans and loosely falling wavy hair got replaced by three-piece suits and gelled hair, not a strand out of place.  
.  
.  
Tongue tripping over English syllables and endearments. Still trying to navigate a foreign language.  
.  
.  
.  
_("The first spoils of war are innocence, Eames.”  
“This isn’t war, a- darling!”)_  
.  
.  
.  
(Eamon had never been good at lying to Arthur and Mal. Turns out, neither was Eames.)  
***  
In the wake of Mal’s death, three people are lost. Tossed around like spent chess pieces.  
Only one ever manages to find himself again.  
.  
.  
.  
A bedtime story, really. 

Sometimes things – people – can't be found. 

Before that, though. Before getting lost, before Cobol Engineering and before a too young, too naïve architect. Before that, there is this.  
.  
.  
.  
A hushed call from the opposite ends of the world. A voice bursting with happiness. A voice shadowed with doubt.  
"Arthur. Arthur, is Eames with you?"

A sharp reply. Harshly captured from the easy embrace of sleep. 

"Mal? Yes, Eames is with me. Are you ok? Where are you? Is everything okay?" 

"Everything's okay. It's great. Listen, put me on the speaker. Where are you both? Spain?"

"Petal, how are you? We're missing you. Tell your father not to send us on a two month research trip ever again." 

"Yes, okay." 

They've never heard her like that before, never known her to be distracted- _irritated_. Even at the end of her wits, Mal was never irritated, not about anything, 

"Dominick asked me to marry him." 

"That's amazing! Congratulations!" Happy, excited, confused voices ring out. 

(Irritation precedes shame, fear. It precedes sorrow.)

" _No_. You don't understand," the accusation feels like a blasphemy. "I don't want to marry him. Marriage changes everything. I will have to leave you." 

"Mal, don't be absurd. I promise we'll always be there for you. When is the wedding?"

" _Arthur_. You can't do that. You can't promise me that. This is real life." 

"A chrí. Listen to me. Take deep breaths. Better? No, _listen to me_. We can't promise anything. But this? This is something we will strive to do. We will be there for you. Whenever. Wherever. Now, when is the wedding?" 

Eames always was better with words.

A small laugh. Accidental and precious. Shattered glass.  
"Only after you are both back with me. Only after that."  
.  
.  
.  
(Here is a truth: Arthur doesn’t make promises he can’t keep.)  
.  
.  
.  
(Here is another truth: sometimes promises can’t be kept.)  
.  
.  
.  
(And here is a third: Mal knows this better than anybody.)  
.  
.  
.  
After Phillipa and James, after the concept of dream within dream.  
After. Mal will be proven right. 

They couldn't be there for her always. Not even if they could move apart oceans and tear down mountains.  
.  
.  
.  
(Dreams make you forget the important things sometimes. 

In the real world, who were they to defy the willful acts of nature?)  
.  
.  
.  
Mal marries Dom in July. She always liked the summer. She glows in her mother's wedding dress which she hates with a fierce passion, dances with Arthur, Eames and Dom. With Professor Miles who is now Stephen to them. 

She drinks wine which she chose for Arthur and eats cake that she picked on Eames' advice. 

Eames is Mal's bridesmaid because as much as he loves her pretentiousness, he hates Dom's. Arthur ends up being Dom's best man and helps him with his tie and hair. 

After the vows, after the dance, Arthur and Eames stand together. Eames mutters filthy things into his ear and just before they are about to go back to their apartments, takes him to his new flat and presents Arthur with its key.  
.  
.  
.  
One day, not too long after, Arthur will remember the way Mal looked, the way her dress floated around her and the way she smiled at him when he left the wedding with Eames.  
***  
Later, there will be this.

“Aren’t you tired?” Eames will ask. Arthur won’t have seen him ever since he would have decided to follow Cobb around the world, living out of suitcases, in cold, austere hotels. Hotels that are nothing like home. Nothing like _Eames_. 

Before that though, there are a million unformed memories.  
***  
The days burn, the world turns.  
The dream-sharing world gains more and more traction with every passing day. 

It turns out, Eames is better at forging as compared to building from scratch. He can improve already existing designs and point out mistakes. As a forger, though, there's nobody quite as good as him. The flaws and fluctuations. The accents and attitudes. 

Arthur, who was always good at research work, is the best point man. There's nobody quite so pragmatic, nobody who can match his uncanny ability to find the deepest, most forgotten details about a person. 

Mal is an unparalleled architect. She likes to show off and stand out like always. She teaches Arthur and Eames about paradox construction and builds waterfalls like mobius strips. 

Dom was always a chemist. He's very good at it. Has the capability to tweak somnacin such that dreams almost look like reality, such that Eames' nose stops bleeding every time he so much as inserts a cannula in his arm.  
.  
.  
.  


(It's months later, _years_ later, when Mal is no longer there to flaunt her architectural capabilities, that Dom tries his hand at it.) 

***  
Two years later, Arthur and Mal will be in a hospital, having rushed there after Mal projectile vomited the contents of her stomach having had a seafood platter.

Eames and Dom will be halfway across the world, in Kochi. And when Arthur will wake them up in the middle of the night to inform them of Mal's pregnancy, he'll have a strong sense of déjà vu.  
.  
.  
.  
When Phillipa is born, Arthur and Eames sit in the waiting room with plastic cups of crappy hospital coffee and crumbly sandwiches. 

Dom stands beside Mal, useless and scared. Face pale as paper. Afterwards though, he's the happiest. Calling their family and friends. Strutting around with a lovesick smile on his face. 

As soon as she's allowed, Mal presents Phillipa to Arthur and Eames, "We're naming her Phillipa. It's after my grandmother, Phillipine." Eames smiles at her and Arthur tries not to drop the tiny bundle in his arms.  
***  
Ariadne will stand in front of her with bags under her eyes, wearing a nice coat over a magenta suit, the coffee scalding her hands. 

“Phillipa,” Ariadne will say, letters like syrup, muted by the storm. 

"Tell me about everything," Phillipa will close her eyes, try to swallow the air trapped too deep in her lungs to escape.  
.  
.  
.  
(Sometimes, the brilliance isn't in the cleverness of the plan, only the stubbornness of the executor.)  
.  
.  
.  
Ariadne will think of conversations half lost to her drunken subconscious. She'll imagine the sarcastic quirk of Eames’s smile, the twinkle in Arthur's eye and the frenzy in Dom's hands. She'll think of a thousand more memories spanning over a decade. She’ll think there is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery and somewhere she'll feel Eames smirking. 

Ariadne will think of Herzogenaurach. She'll remember the burning stench of human flesh, the phantom of ringing bullets, wasted lives and the chasm of grief.  
Her last job. 

She'll finger the gold band on her finger, think of Innaya, of her apartment in Riquier-République, her down to earth, _tedious_ job as an architect and look into the eyes of a too young girl, carved by tragedy. 

She'll talk about the pointman in his perfectly tailored suit and devastating knowledge. The forger with his tattoos and shapeshifting, and think the rest of them never had a chance.  
.  
.  
.  
_(She'll say I don't know everything._

_She'll say you don't need to know everything._

_She'll say the most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile, but that it is indifferent._

_She'll try to relish in the vindictive pleasure of it._

_Ariadne Grenier may be a lot of things. Cruel isn't one of them.)_  
***  
James is born in March. Unexpected and sudden. A bout of heavy rainfall in a desert. 

Mal is living with Madelyn and Stephen in Lyon, in her childhood home. She had been prescribed bed rest and told to avoid traveling because of partial placenta previa. 

Dom, Eames and Arthur are running a job in Italy. The close proximity, a measure to ensure that they can reach Mal as soon as possible, if need be.  
.  
.  
.  
James comes in the sleepy depths of night. He wakes Mal up screaming, gasping and swearing. He's a month early. Precariously small. 

Dom, Arthur and Eames get the news of his birth just as they are about to leave for the airport. They come to see Mal a day and a half after she has given birth. They bring Philippa to the hospital with them, to meet her little brother.  
.  
.  
.  
Phillipa detests James in the beginning. It's only their father has abandoned them to their grandparents and their mother is nothing more than a blotch of memory, does she start warming up to him.  
.  
.  
.  
_(“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”)_  
***  
"It's our seventh anniversary," says Arthur. "I don't know what to give him. What do I give him!"

"Why are you asking me?" Dom asks him, and yes, that is a great question.

Arthur shrugs. "You and Mal have been successfully married for two years and have been together for almost nine. You must know something about being in a relationship. What did you give her to cement your relationship?"

Dom stares blankly at him.

Arthur sighs. "What was your most precious gift to Mal?"

"I'd say the ring I proposed to her with, since it is the most expensive gift," Dom says, "but I also bought her highlighters? Lots of highlighters! One of them even has her name engraved on it."

Arthur bangs his head on the table before him.

Why is he still friends with Dom?

"Whatever you decide to give him," Dom starts, and Arthur looks up to face his phone balanced in front of him, "make sure it means as much to you as it would mean to him."

Arthur is still processing that surprisingly insightful advice, when Dom adds, "For instance, on our third anniversary, I gave Mal the socks my dad gave me for my twentieth birthday."

Arthur stares at him, mouth agape, and tells himself that head-desking can't be the solution to all his problems. "How did you ever get Mal to look at you?"

Dom doesn't even bat an eyelash. "My ferocious charm and tequila. Copious amounts of tequila."

Arthur head-desks.  
.  
.  
.  
"It's our seventh anniversary and I need a gift for Eames. Your husband was completely useless, by the way."

"Arthur, mon petit bâton, I'm hurt that you would call Dom before calling _me_ , your best friend." 

Arthur looks on as a wicked smile spreads across Mal's face. He remembers why he didn't call her for help. 

"Although, you know, you really can't go wrong with wrapping yourself up in a bow and waiting for him seductively in bed or something, I suppose."

“I’m hanging up now,” he says, because he is.

“You do that,” Mal says, just before Arthur does.

His relationship is doomed to fail.  
.  
.  
.  
Later, Arthur will look back to that moment and think, that was one of the last times she ever saw him, _really_ saw him.  
***  
It's December and their job in Helsinki has left them chilled to their bones. Arthur and Eames leave LAX with a sigh of relief. Feeling warm for the first time in more than a month. 

The door opens with a click. Mal is sitting on the couch opposite to the front door. She looks up, only to frown into her lap, turns towards Dom with pursed lips and accusing eyes, "Did you do this?"

Even before Dom opens his mouth, Mal dismisses her words with a wave of her hand, the sharpness in her receding, leaving behind something weary and sad. "No, it was me, wasn't it? I do miss them quite terribly."

"Miss who?" Arthur asks, stopping to deposit his coat and boots, leaving their suitcases by the door. 

"You both, of course," Mal says, stepping forward to reach out and cup Arthur's face in her hands. "Can't you see, Dom? They're all waiting for us. Our children, Arthur, Eames, my parents. We have to get back to them. We have to wake up."

Arthur stands there, frozen under her touch. He can feel Eames tensing up beside him. She turns towards Eames, runs her fingers over his cheekbones, as if to remind herself of their shape, the look in her eyes is one of distant fondness, as if touching a memory.

Dom steps in, her hands in his, directs her to the kitchen table. "Mal, we _are_ in the real world. We are awake," he says, glancing over his shoulder at Arthur and Eames, helpless and scared.

Mal yanks her hands out of Dom's hold, anger flashing in her eyes, Arthur turns on his heel and bolts down the hallway, into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him with too much force. He leans his back against it and slides down, fumbling for the weighted dice in his pocket, trying to block out the raised voices carrying from across the kitchen. He rolls it once, twice, three times.  
.  
.  
.  
The resulting four on the top of the dice mocks him each time.  
***  
It doesn't take a lot of head-scratching for Ariadne to decide to completely integrate herself in the dream-sharing world. She has a degree in architecture and a few more illegal jobs, other than inception, under her belt.  
.  
.  
.  
Ariadne sips her coffee, staring at Eames on the other side of the table. 

The forger continues to drink his mango tea.“You’re putting too much stock in sexual tension.”

Ariadne frowns, “It’s obvious that you and Arthur are a couple. ”

“It really isn’t,” Eames says. “It's just that I've known Arthur forever. Thus, I know everything about him. You're just reading too much into it.”

“You're surprisingly bad at lying for an international criminal. I don't know how the Interpol hasn't caught up with you yet. 

Eames looks at Ariadne, clearly amused, “Alright, I’ve spent a lot of my free time observing Arthur, so I know more than almost everything about him. Although, I still think you’re too caught up in some innocent, platonic flirtation.”

"Eames, you flirt differently with Arthur. But that’s not the only reason why I’m saying you're a couple."

“I flirt with everybody—”

“How many people do you address with ridiculous, made-up pet names?” Ariadne challenges.

“I'm British,” Eames dismisses with a shrug. “I call everyone by pet names.”

“Yes, because you very obviously love stereotypes.”

A surge of satisfaction goes through her at Eames' nonplussed look.

“You're being unreasonably harsh,” he says. “Okay, so Arthur and I _might_ have had sex,” Eames acquiesces, “but that doesn’t make us a couple. First of all, my advances, as you have would have observed, are rarely serious. Two, and this an important point so pay attention. Neither of us would risk a serious relationship in the dream-sharing world. We both are very diligent at covering our weak spots.”

Ariadne scoffs, waving her coffee cup indignantly. Eames eyes it warily.

“Anyways, Arthur barely tolerates my presence.”

“Oh my God,” Ariadne groans, "I should have simply asked Cobb.”

Eames glances at the milling passersby.

Ariadne stands up and starts towards the door, “You know what? Okay. I’ll find actual proof of you and Arthur being a couple.”

“You’re very interested in this,” Eames says, throwing money on the table to walk after her. “Concerningly so.”

“Even _Cobb_ knows something is going on.”

“ _Cobb_ was supposed to retire a year ago. I guess there is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery."

"Eames, what the fuck, that doesn't even make sense."  
***  
Arthur is babysitting Phillipa and James, and Eames is somewhere in his journey to Dublin, when Dom calls.  
.  
.  
.  
Mal is dead, Mal is gone, Mal is a suicide. Bright, brilliant Mal.

Mal is a greyscale image of the ocean, endless and calm, of a pale beach, of crying seagulls.  
.  
.  
.  
_("She jumped. She jumped right in front of me. And I- I could only look. I did nothing.")_  
.  
.  
.  
Arthur doesn't think he'll ever get used to the idea of Mal being more than a phone call away. The memory of Mal, sun-bright, vibrant, wedged permanently in his skull, the memory of her laughing so hard she could barely breathe. 

(Out of all the deaths he’s witnessed, only Mal’s seems like a sin.)  
.  
.  
.  
Eames remembers her in sunlight, pregnant and so alive it hurt to look at her, imagines her painted lips shiny with salt stretched in a grin and he gets drunk, far, far too drunk. 

When he finally reaches the Cobbs' household, his eyes are red from all the crying he didn’t do and the world as he knew it, has crumbled around him. 

(Nothing is consecrated anymore.)  
***  
Arthur could sometimes still see glimpses of the old, familiar Dom, who could be a dick. Who got easily distracted, but nonetheless was a good friend, a kind, intelligent father, in possession of a wicked, understated sense of humor that came to play at the oddest times. 

The glimpses were few and far between, however, and more often than not, Arthur felt like he was sharing space with a stranger. He had come to hate the faraway look Dom could get, like he was a hundred years old, like he couldn't see Arthur any more than Mal could, in the end.

When it got too much for him, he found Eames. They dreamt together, in a rundown motel somewhere, dreamt of a clean, modern hotel with five hundred identical rooms. Dreamt of a mark, a safe. Dreamt they had fifteen minutes until the kick.  
.  
.  
.  
Sometimes, Dom enlisted Eames' help. He was still the best forger, after all. 

It was a job in Yaoundé. An easy job. Clean money. The plan was perfect and everything in the dream was going off without a hitch. Until. 

Mal stood in front of him, lovely as always. Radiant and distant. Nothing more than a shadow of the real person. It didn't matter, Eames still froze. He froze and Mallorie Cobb, his dead best friend, stabbed him. 

Eames bled from a butcher's knife to the gut and a shock to his system. Hours or maybe minutes later, Arthur found him on the floor contorted with pain, face white.  
Arthur, lovely Arthur, a prince among men. He bent over Eames, kissed him with hot lips, kissed him as he pressed a cold barrel to his temple.

“Darling,” Eames said into the kiss and tasted blood. “You’re so very good at shooting people in the head.”

“I’m only waking them up,” Arthur answered, dimpling a bit. Eames committed them to memory, tried to see the changes in them through the haze of pain. They seldom showed these days.  


.  
.  
.  
(Eyes cold and angry, shining with distrust, rage, _betrayal_.

"You had no right, Dom. Sort yourself out. Don't you fucking dare call me before you manage _that_. She was my friend. Since much before you knew her, might I add. If this is how you're honouring her, you have never understood love.")  
.  
.  
.  
Sometimes though, sometimes they met in L.A. It was their favourite rendez-vous. 

Eames pattering around in the huge L.A. house that now inhabited Stephen and Madelyn Miles along with the children. The children's favourite person - he and Arthur shared that distinction - now that their father was nothing more than a tinny voice on the phone. 

Arthur meandering around in L.A. to spend time with the kids, take a break from the insanity that was Dominick Cobb and meet Eames.  
***  
_"… In the first layer of the dream, I can impersonate Browning and suggest the concept to Fischer's conscious mind. Then when we take him a level deeper his own projection of Browning should, should feed that right back to him._

_"So he gives himself the idea?"_

_"Precisely, it's the only way it will stick – it has to seem self-generated."_

_"Eames, I am impressed."_

_"Your condescension, as always, is much appreciated, Arthur, thank you."_  
***  
"Darling, Cobb really isn't good for you. He's not the same person he used to be."

"Don't you think I know that?"

"Well then, what will it take for you to leave him? You've been on the lam with him for more than three years. You can come back. We can go back to our flat. I miss you, darling."  
.  
.  
.  
A thousand unsaid words, a million unforgivable actions.  
.  
.  
.  
Arthur sometimes thinks he should have left and gone back with Eames right there and then.  
***  
_"What's she doing here, Cobb?"_

_"But pain…pain is in the mind. And judging by the decor, we’re in your mind, aren’t we, Arthur?"_

Bam.  
.  
.  
.  
A musty warehouse with too little ventilation. 

Arthur leans back and taps his fingers against the desk. "How was Mal?"

"What?" Dom asks.

"Don't insult me, Dom. Which memory was it this time?"

Dom takes the needle out of his arm and starts packing up the PASIV, "That is none of your business."

"Yes, it is," Arthur contradicts. "It is my business, when you could sabotage a job that I have a personal and professional stake in."

"I have it under control," Dom tells him coolly.

Arthur knows better than to take it at face value.

( _"It is my business when you are slowly and steadily poisoning the memory of my best friend,"_ Arthur doesn't say.)  
***  
A few months and numerous odd jobs after the world as he knew it, has crumbled around him, Eames catches up with Arthur and Dom in Herzegovina. 

Eames picks through his salad with his fork, separating all the pine nuts into a cluster in the centre of the plate, "Come back with me, Arthur. Dom’s a big boy, he can handle himself. You don’t owe him shit." 

“Please don’t do this,” Arthur says, a deep tremor in his voice.

Arthur’s staring at him expectantly. His eyes, that melted treacle shade of judgement so fierce, Eames cows under it every time. He opens his mouth to say something, but all that comes out is,

“I am not going to give up my life and go with you. I'm not going to go on the lam and become a fugitive for Dominick Cobb. I’m sorry if that disappoints you.”

Eames isn’t sure what he expects Arthur’s reaction to be at this. All he knows is he doesn’t expect what little colour is in his cheeks to wash out, his expression marbling and his spine stiffening where he sits.

"I don't expect anything from you, Eames. You can’t disappoint me.”

Eames nods, ever so slight. Looks down at their knees, only a few inches apart. The carpet’s a horrible yellow colour.

He reaches down, grabs his bag and when he stands up, there’s a look in Arthur’s face like he wants to say something else entirely.

“Then I guess I’ll go,” Eames says, truth or dare in the line of his mouth.

And in Arthur’s, too, but what he says instead is,

“Good luck.”

Eames turns to the door, is almost out and when he looks back over his shoulder, Arthur hasn’t moved. He’s still there, ever so close, waiting, watching. There’s no expression on his face, or maybe too many to decipher.

Eames offers a tight, unbidden smile, one that clenches in his cheeks. He shuts the door quietly behind himself, walks down the corridor and out into the blistering sunshine, all the way to the airport.  
***  
_"So do you want to take a leap of faith or become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone?"_  
.  
.  
.  
Arthur dropped everything for Cobb the way he never quite did for Eames, but that was only because Eames never needed him to.  
.  
.  
.  
(Or so Arthur had thought.)  
***  
When it ends, it ends like this. 

Dom is killed in Herzogenaurach on a Tuesday, one week before Mal's fifteen-year death anniversary.

 _I'm coming, Mal_ , he thinks as he calmly raises his gun. _Wait for me._

When he dies, his hair is streaked with grey.  
He's not as lonely as he thought he would be.  


.  
.  
.  
When it ends, it ends like this.

Somnacin drips onto the floor from the mangled remains of the PASIV device. The warehouse is strewn with bodies, most of which weren’t present when they went under less than a minute ago.

A wet gasping breath. His heart stutters as he lunges. He isn’t close enough to catch Arthur as he crumples.

“Fuck,” Eames hisses, knees skidding painfully over broken glass as he drops down next to those sprawled, heavy limbs, casting his eyes around for Dom. “Arthur?”

Arthur's eyes are glassy and full of guilty surprise, his mouth red, and something catches in his throat. His hands are trembling.

So are Eames'.

“Stay with me,” Eames orders as crimson pools out through Arthur's shirt, spreading in every direction like a bursting dam of blood. “Arthur? Arthur.”

“Whe- where's Dom?" Arthur gasps, "S-Sorry,” the tendons in his neck straining as his body contorts in pain of its own accord. His legs kick out in lazy twitches, splashing more blood.

Eames shakes his head, he can't locate Dom. “No, stop it. Stop Arthur."

Arthur’s slipping out of Eames' loose grasp where he lies, body taut with effort and twisting, as if to coil away from the pain buried deep inside his guts. “Fuck. Sorry.”

“Don’t,” Eames snaps, and Arthur's face, it slackens as the fight starts to drain out of him.

Eames blinks away stinging tears before they can trickle of their own accord.

“Go,” Arthur whispers quietly between heavy, laboured breaths.

“What? No,” Eames growls.

“Eames,” Arthur begs, body protesting. “You can’t – might be more –” he fights for the words and his face screws.

“I’m not leaving you,” Eames says coldly, as decidedly as he’s made every other choice in his life.

When his hand starts to drop Eames grabs it firmly. 

Arthur's eyes flutter shut.  


.  
.  
.  
When it ends, it ends like this.

Arthur’s blood dropping to the floor through his fingers.

Hernandez's face curled with perverse pleasure. 

The butt of a gun, then the barrel.

The way he hopes with futile need, feels the siren song of his ending like the curved wing of a swan, a velvet curtain dropping.

The crack of the gun echoing, the wail of a horse as it flees.

Eames dies instantly.

.  
.  
.  
Ariadne comes into the warehouse too late. She comes in after everything has finished. Comes in, to three dead, mangled bodies, the phantom of ringing bullets and wasted lives.

Ariadne piles the bodies in the middle of the room.

She forces herself to think about the inconvenient weight of them, instead of their faces.

She thinks about the Innaya in Paris. About hidden cafés. 

The stench of the gasoline stings her eyes and she doesn't cry. Not yet. 

In the city of Herzogenaurach, a bonfire of bodies is built in the middle of a warehouse. 

By the time the fire is extinguished, there's nothing left other than the ashes of three deadly intelligent men.  
.  
.  
.  
Ariadne reads about it in an article two weeks later from a hotel in Paris.  
***  
“I came to Paris – the inception job – for you.”

Eames will say it very tenderly, and it shouldn’t be enough, but it will feel like enough.

Arthur won’t mean to reach out and fist Eames’ shirt, but he will. He’ll reach and grab and pull; he’ll press his mouth against Eames’ so hard there won’t be room for surprise.

Just Arthur’s weight, unsteady over Eames and Eames’ fingertips bruising the valley of his spine. And then one of them will laugh and the other will join in. They will laugh with their tongues against their teeth and that moment will feel like forgiveness. 

Arthur will pull back, just enough to whisper into Eames’ open mouth,

“The thing is, I have very high expectations of you, Mr Eames.”

Eames will kiss him, rough and yearning, mumbling back into the wet of Arthur’s words,

“Good.”

**Author's Note:**

> "The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile, but that it is indifferent."  
> ~ Stanley Kubrick
> 
> "There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery."  
> ~ Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
> 
> “Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”  
> ~ Leo Tolstoy


End file.
